Undergrad conference to explore principles, practices of American political life

Undergrad conference to explore principles, practices of American political life

March 25, 2014

Carl Scott

The sixth Undergraduate Conference on the American Polity, co-sponsored by the Alexander
Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) and the Franklin Forum
at Skidmore College, is scheduled Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29, at Skidmore.

The public is welcome to the keynote lecture by Professor Carl Scott, visiting assistant
professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, at 8 p.m. Friday,
March 28, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall, as well as the student panels
on Saturday, March 29, on the second floor of Murray-Aikins Dining Hall.

Partly as a way of getting past certain stale framings of our core political debates,
and partly as a way of being true to what comprehensive study of the American political
tradition reveals, Scott will argue that America has held five fundamental conceptions
of liberty. He has labeled them as follows: natural rights liberty, classical-communitarian
liberty, economic-autonomy liberty, progressivist liberty, and personal-autonomy liberty
and asserts that all have a claim to be the correct conception of political liberty,
as well as the most genuinely American one. Scott explains that over the course of
America’s politics, these conceptions have been set against one another in various
ways, and several have also cooperated with or in a sense have been combined with
one another. He will introduce the five different conceptions and explore how the
main partisan coalitions of today utilize them.

The conference features student papers that will address the principles and practice
of American political life, and their roots in the Western tradition, from a variety
of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophical and moral, historical, legal
and constitutional, and religious and cultural inquiries. Work by students from Baylor
University, Colgate University, City University of New York (Macaulay Honors College,
The Hertog Scholars Program), Emory University (Program in Democracy and Citizenship),
Hamilton College (The Alexander Hamilton Institute), Princeton University (James Madison
Program for American Ideals and Institutions), and Skidmore College will be featured.

Selected students from Cincinnati Country Day School in Ohio will also participate
in conference as part of an AHI pilot program to evaluate the viability of the development
of an extension of the program to the secondary level.

Conference sessions will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 29, and all three panels
will be held in banquet rooms 1 and 2, second floor, Murray-Aikins Dining Hall. Following
the day’s panel discussions, the conference will conclude with a dinner (participants
only) beginning at 6:30 p.m., banquet room 4, Murray-Aikins Dining Hall. Following
dinner, at 8:00 p.m., Professor Scott will lead a concluding conversation with students
on the meanings of liberty.

AHI is located at 21 W. Park Row, Clinton, New York, and was founded in 2007 to promote
excellence in scholarship through the study of freedom, democracy, and capitalism.
We create and support programs that provide for rigorous debate and the enhancement
of civic and economic literacy. For more information please click here.

The Franklin Forum at Skidmore College is a student-led reading group that facilitates,
through the discussion of closely read texts, the pursuit of knowledge of oneself
and of one’s historical circumstances. The Franklin Forum is located in Saratoga Springs,
NY. Please click here for more information.